One of the odd things about unconventional monetary policies is the absence of a vigorous debate about the costs of these experiments, whether in the US, in Japan or now in Europe.

Instead, almost all the chatter revolves around the timing and market consequences of possible exits. Indeed, it is almost as if these initiatives had little downside, at least so far. Even when the limits of these policies become evident, the solution appears more of the same rather than calls for a different approach.

A new report from Swiss Re is changing that. The report calculates that US savers alone have lost $470 billion in interest rate income — and that is net of lower debt costs. Central bank policies involve “a whole host of unintended consequences; asset price bubbles, an impaired credit intermediation process and increasing economic inequality are just a few,” the report warns.

The Swiss Re report comes at a time of rising concern among both insurers and managers of public pension funds that the benefits they promise to savers and retirees will be cut as a result of these policies. That is because they hold a significant part of their assets in fixed-income securities to match their long-term liabilities.

Forgone yield income for insurers on both sides of the Atlantic could total $400 billion, Swiss Re adds. Especially problematical are the guarantee products insurers offer, where rates on offer are still way above European government bond yields.

Meanwhile the $9 trillion increase in households’ stock market wealth since 2008 “has predominantly benefited society’s wealthiest”, it adds. “Whether the increase in wealth has led to the so-called ‘wealth effect’ (i.e., impact on actual consumption) is questionable. There is no clear evidence of equity-related gains having translated into additional consumption and thus no real economic growth.”

In other words, with wage gains still far short of expectation, and investment income falling, there is little hope that demand from the average household can recover any time soon.

The report also comes when both the inability of these unconventional policies to heal the real economy and the difficulty of exiting without bringing a market swoon has never been more evident. Despite zero interest rates and massive asset purchases (albeit until recently in the case of the Fed), economic growth — expected to come in at 0.6 per cent annualised pace for the US and 1.5 per cent in Japan — remains weak.

In the US, there has been “a wave of contractions in the three months through February in manufacturing output, real goods consumption export volumes and construction,” economists at JPMorgan noted.

The main effect of these policies is to give companies on both sides of the Pacific more of an incentive to invest in share buy-backs than to invest in plant and equipment in their core business. This despite the fact that companies that engaged in such activity did not show meaningful outperformance in recent years, according to Merrill Lynch research.

But corporate earnings have not fundamentally improved. In the US, adjusted corporate profits declined at a 5.5 per cent annual rate in the last quarter of 2014. “We believe the natural progression of the business cycle will begin gradually squeezing business (and profit) margins,” economist Michael Feroli of JPMorgan notes.

US stocks were virtually flat in the first quarter, beating cash and gold but little else. Today, analysts are cutting their estimates of corporate earnings in the US. Their expectations for the S&P500 have come down 8 per cent over the past three months — a bigger cut than in any other recent quarter, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch research.

Companies are not rewarded for long-term investment with a distant pay-off. Better to buy growth through mergers and acquisitions. That is why in the first quarter, global transactions at almost $900 billion, were the highest since 2007, according to Dealogic.

Meanwhile in Japan virtually all the improvement in corporate earnings merely reflects the translation gains of a weak yen.

To be sure, insurers have a vested interest in criticising policies that drive down both the returns they can glean for their clients and their own business prospects. But it would be sad indeed if the main conclusion readers of the report draw is to sell their insurance stocks.

— Financial Times